CST Free Weight Exercises By Scott Sonnon

I had a great weekend at a Postural Restoration Institute Myokinematic Dysfunction course, so it seems fitting that my first reading recommendation of the week would direct you to their website: Postural Restoration Institute.  There are a lot of free articles that give you a good introduction to the PRI philosophy.  I’d highly recommend checking [...]
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Just a quick heads up on a couple of articles I saw over the weekend indicating that long distance running is bad for the cardiovascular system, despite apparently positive impacts on the normal metrics for cariovascular health.

Kurt notes and points to one on Medpage

Open Water Chicago points to a separate report on the same research in abcNews

Researchers at the Minneapolis Heart Institute and Foundation found that these runners faced a greater risk of accumulating plaque in their coronary arteries – despite having less body fat, lower LDL cholesterol levels, and lower heart rates.

An abcnews comment amuses me:

No one is sure exactly what the plaque findings mean.

Well, we can guess.

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A few weeks ago, I gave you a quick peek at an excerpt from one of my presentations in our new Optimal Shoulder Performance DVD set.  Today, I thought you might like to check out a bit from Mike Reinold, my collaborator on the project.  This DVD set should be out soon, so be sure [...]
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This is an mind / body one. From the abstract below it is not clear what they did or how they reached the conclusion, but it brings to mind something that Frank Forencich pointed to last year

Can Your Brain Fight Fatigue?

…..many (but not all) physiologists now believe that exhaustion isn’t just in the muscles but also involves the brain. “What we now think is that the muscle isn’t acting on its own,” he says. “There’s an interplay of central processing and muscular exertion.” From the outset of exercise, “the brain asks for and gets constant feedback from the muscles and other systems especially about body temperature” and checks on “how are things going,” says Carl Foster, a professor in the department of exercise and sports science at the University of Wisconsin in La Crosse. Through mechanisms that aren’t fully understood, the brain tracks and calibrates the amount of fuel that is in the muscles, as well as the body’s core temperature. As the amount of fuel drops and the temperature rises, the brain decides that some danger zone is being approached. It starts reducing “the firing frequency of motor neurons to the exercising muscle, leading to a loss of force production,” says Ed Chambers, a researcher at the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at the University of Birmingham in England and an author of the carbohydrate-drinks study. In other words, the mind, recognizing that the body may be going too hard, starts sending fewer of the messages that tell the muscles to contract. The muscles contract less frequently and more feebly. In a sensation familiar to anyone who exercises, your legs die beneath you.

The limit to exercise tolerance in humans: mind over muscle?

In exercise physiology, it has been traditionally assumed that high-intensity aerobic exercise stops at the point commonly called exhaustion because fatigued subjects are no longer able to generate the power output required by the task despite their maximal voluntary effort. We tested the validity of this assumption by measuring maximal voluntary cycling power before (mean ± SD, 1,075 ± 214 W) and immediately after (731 ± 206 W) (P < 0.001) exhaustive cycling exercise at 242 ± 24 W (80% of peak aerobic power measured during a preliminary incremental exercise test) in ten fit male human subjects. Perceived exertion during exhaustive cycling exercise was strongly correlated (r = −0.82, P = 0.003) with time to exhaustion (10.5 ± 2.1 min). These results challenge the long-standing assumption that muscle fatigue causes exhaustion during high-intensity aerobic exercise, and suggest that exercise tolerance in highly motivated subjects is ultimately limited by perception of effort.

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1. I thought I’d kick this post off with a little technique troubleshooting.  Yesterday, one of the “guinea pigs” for my new project emailed this video to me and asked for some suggestions on bench press technique:

BP from Caleb Chiu on Vimeo.
My suggestions to him were as follows:
a. Your feet are antsy and jumping all [...]
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I’ve previously pointed to the excellent book Born to Run, which looked at barefoot running within a narrative of a marathon in Mexico involving the Tarahumara Indians.

The book also features “Barefoot Ted” here he is talking to the Google Staff:

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So, as you know, I’m not the biggest fan of running.
Actually, it’s not the bipedal form of moving from place to place faster than walking that I’m against …
It’s long, slow, boring “cardio” in the supposed “fat burning range” because … well … it doesn’t really burn that much fat, it makes you weaker, and [...]

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day!  I was actually going to take today off - not just in honor of my Irish heritage, but because I was hoping to work from home and catch up on work.  As it turns out, I went in to the facility for our staff in-service (given by Brian St. Pierre, who [...]
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Quite a few newspapers picked up on this study - e.g the Independent

As usual NHS Choices calms things down and tries to maintain the paradigm!

While this type of research may suggest theoretical benefits to short bursts of intensive exercise, it does not change the fact that regular, moderate-intensity exercise is good for our health.

Anyway, this one adds to the evidence of the efficacy of intervals

Here is what the researchers say:

“We have shown that interval training does not have to be ‘all out’ in order to be effective,” says Professor Martin Gibala. “Doing 10 one-minute sprints on a standard stationary bike with about one minute of rest in between, three times a week, works as well in improving muscle as many hours of conventional long-term biking less strenuously.”

A practical model of low-volume high-intensity interval training induces mitochondrial biogenesis in human skeletal muscle: potential mechanisms

High-intensity interval training (HIT) induces skeletal muscle metabolic and performance adaptations that resemble traditional endurance training despite a low total exercise volume. Most HIT studies have employed ‘all out’, variable-load exercise interventions (e.g. repeated Wingate tests) that may not be safe, practical and/or well tolerated by certain individuals. Our purpose was to determine the performance, metabolic and molecular adaptations to a more practical model of low-volume HIT. Seven men (21 ± 0.4 years, ml kg−1 min−1) performed six training sessions over 2 weeks. Each session consisted of 8–12 × 60 s intervals at ∼100% of peak power output elicited during a ramp peak test (355 ± 10 W) separated by 75 s of recovery. Training increased exercise capacity, as assessed by significant improvements on both 50 kJ and 750 kJ cycling time trials (P < 0.05 for both). Skeletal muscle (vastus lateralis) biopsy samples obtained before and after training revealed increased maximal activity of citrate synthase (CS) and cytochrome c oxidase (COX) as well as total protein content of CS, COX subunits II and IV, and the mitochondrial transcription factor A (Tfam) (P < 0.05 for all). Nuclear abundance of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ co-activator 1α (PGC-1α) was ∼25% higher after training (P < 0.05), but total PGC-1α protein content remained unchanged. Total SIRT1 content, a proposed activator of PGC-1α and mitochondrial biogenesis, was increased by ∼56% following training (P < 0.05). Training also increased resting muscle glycogen and total GLUT4 protein content (both P < 0.05). This study demonstrates that a practical model of low volume HIT is a potent stimulus for increasing skeletal muscle mitochondrial capacity and improving exercise performance. The results also suggest that increases in SIRT1, nuclear PGC-1α, and Tfam may be involved in coordinating mitochondrial adaptations in response to HIT in human skeletal muscle.

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As a followup of sorts, to my article titled: Doctor Reveals What You Should Eat Every Day For Fat Loss And Health, I’d like to share with you how you can improve every marker of your health … in just ten days … by simply changing what you’re eating.
Can it really be that easy?
Yup!
What’s [...]

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